Patricia Kosseim, Senior General Counsel and Director General, Legal Services, Policy, Research and Technology Analysis for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, was asked, at the request of Commission’s counsel, to provide an overview of the legislation for protecting privacy in Canada and to answer questions about lawful access issues from a federal perspective.

A municipality in British Columbia showed a “near-complete lack of awareness and understanding” of BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and made no effort to assess potential privacy violations when it implemented employee-monitoring software on the computers of a dozen high-level employees, including the mayor.

A recent release from the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario on the Personal Data Ecosystem praises organizations taking initiatives to integrate the socio-economic benefits of personal information while maintaining privacy and confidentiality. The Commissioner, Dr. Cavoukian, also co-authored a paper with researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom that delineates the systems […]

Canada’s Information and Privacy Commissioner has released decisions in three formal complaints against Facebook’s privacy practices, under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. The results offer valuable insight into the workings of the world’s most popular social network. Users and non-users alike might also feel confident that the company is interested in addressing privacy concerns.

Over the brief period of Facebook’s existence, the company’s practices have provided a rich source of knowledge for businesses and other organizations that collect and use customers’ information, operate online or generally fall under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) or other privacy legislation.

Sometimes, technology creates new ways to exploit information faster than the law and business can keep up. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is trying to make sure that doesn’t happen in the case of behavioural advertising. Last year, the Privacy Commissioner conducted consultations on the new ways that organizations are collecting and using customers’ personal information, and prepared its Report on the 2010 Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s Consultations on Online Tracking, Profiling and Targeting, and Cloud Computing.

In 2010, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada conducted consultations on current privacy issues, including online tracking, profiling, targeting and cloud computing. The office released its report on the consultations earlier this year, and it’s available online.

Over the past couple of years, Facebook has had run-ins with the Canadian Privacy Commissioner. And Canada’s not alone; privacy watchdogs in the United States and around the world have been critical of Facebook’s willingness to sacrifice users’ personal data in the name of social media…

I’ve discussed the Privacy by Design principle before, in the Inside Internal Control newsletter. In case you don’t know, PbD is an approach developed by Dr. Ann Cavoukian, the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, which proactively embeds privacy protection by default in the design of an organization’s practices and products.